This proposal is intended to help clarify the processes governing self-control and self-regulatory behavior in children and adults. Our general approach will involve a program of laboratory experiments supplemented by observation of children and adults in various waiting and working situations. Variables that seem to be associated with effective self-regulation in the observational studies will be tested more precisely as experimentally manipulated independent variables. Our general objectives include an increasingly deep analysis of the processes underlying sustained waiting, working, and other future-oriented activity for the sake of chosen long-term goals and delayed outcomes; resistance to temptations and to distraction while working or waiting; evaluative self-reactions (e.g., self-reward for adequate achievement, self-denial or punishment for failure to meet internal standards), and selective processing of positive and negative information about oneself. Each of these activities will be studied to further clarify the variables most significant for its development, organization, maintenance, and (in selected cases), therapeutic or educational modification. We will focus especially on the role and organization of planning, self-instructions, self-monitoring, rules, and cognitive transformations to overcome "stimulus control" (situational constraints and pressures) and to achieve greater self-control, competence, and mastery. We will also examine interactions with selected person variables in each of the self-control paradigms.